Category Archives: Offensive practices

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18 complete floorball practices and in total 96 floorball drills to use on you floorball practice / training. The floorball drills are divided into stations to activate many floorball players at the same time on your floorball practice.

In a floorball game you have 5 players against 5 players, but if you look closer, you can apply the rule from mathematics “Lowest common denominator”, in that case you will always have 1 on 1 situations on the floorball floor.
If you are able to fool one player or support one player better than the other team, you will have a 2 on 1 situation and therefore an advantage, so why try to complicate the floorball practices and drills with for example, more than 3 on 3?

“The way I use to develop an aerobic condition is three against three, man to man, in a square 20 metres by 20.” /José Mourinho

“Everything must be kept simple, do not complicate what is a simple business, a simple beautiful game” / Luiz Felipe Scolari

To challenge or to be challenged

Many times floorball coaches are talking about challenging another player or defensemen, but what does it mean? For me, to challenge, means a player with the ball needs to move towards a free space and get the defensive player to move there to take the challenge, if he/she doesn’t, you are past. If you go straight against the defensemen in his/her territory, you will get challenged, right?

Question: Hi Jukka, I am in Calgary working at Hockey Canada’s head office and we just ordered the drill book 6-10 yr olds..is it a hard copy drill book or is it an ebook? Just wondering when we will get it?
Thanks
Anthony Herrington

Answer: It’s an eBook, and its delivered “manually” after payment, through e-mail (usually after a couple of hours, like with your order), so there is not a direct download link.
Best regards,
Jukkahttp://www.flrball.com

The last theme on the International coaching training, was goal scoring and goalie techniques. I have chosen to only translate the goal scoring part to floorball from hockey.

I wrote earlier about what is important when you practice to score goals in floorball.
– Shoot quickly
– Shoot with precision
– Shoot hard/fast
– “Hide” the shot
– Shoot unannounced

Here are some other aspects, like the distnace from where you are shooting from.
This is a picture how the goal and goalie looks like from a longer distnace (if you shoot early).

By moving just 1,5 meter closer the goal and goalie, the free space in the goal is radically reduced, and therefore also the goal scoring opportunities.

Shoot earlier if you want the best odds to score a goal in floorball.

Move in the sight

During this lesson, it was also recommended from a goalie point of view to move in the sight a little bit, you don’t need to hit the post and in, to score a goal. Shots close to the goalie body are many times hard to catch and you also minimize the risk of missing the goal totally, and then you will definitely not score goals.

Freeze the goalie

The skill level of the goalies has also dramatically improved, and a technique to improve the goal scoring chances is to “freeze” the goalie before the actual shot or pass to teammate. Freezing means the goalie is totally prepared for shot in first moment, but instead the shot or pass comes in the next moment.
This can be done with a small shot feint, pass feint or other move that makes the goalie believe “OK, now the shot comes”. When the goalie makes a small reaction in the first step, it will reduce the time for the actual save in the next step, either it’s a shot or pass to a teammate who will shoot.

In the International Coaching Education, during the World Championships in Sweden, we had the opportunity to listen to the Swedish National Hockey team coach, before each game.

“We want to play with full control (puck / ball possession) towards the offensive zone, and in the “zone” we try to go straight towards the goal, P1 goes in front of the goal and P2 seeks up the rebound area. We also try to stay in the way of the goalie and steer the shots. Other areas we focus on, are to “win the inside” in 1-1 situations. You can say that, the more skilled players you have the less we talk about how, it’s more about what.”

…Floorball Goalie Trainer or Goal Scoring Coach, Part 4
In hockey, one of the teams in Sweden on elite level has created their own shooting center to improve the goal scoring and shooting skills… fully appliccable to floorball.

Most of the teams also have special practices for goalies, during the weeks or months, but this team also have special practices for goal scoring!

During this shooting or goal scoring practice, the rink is divided into two areas, one for the offensive players and one for the defensive players. Each zone has four drills running at the same time.

Forwards
1. Running in from the border “Shoot in the middle of the step”
2. Pass from one side, shoot directly at the other post
3. 2 vs. 0 – rebound – Shot from defensive player
4. Goalie freezed in right position, player tries to find the spots to score goal, by looking at the angle of the ball.

Defensive players
1. Pass vertically and a shot.
2. Pass from corner to a defensive player running towards the goal, shot.
3. Pass from the “pocket” (along the border), and shot.
4. A forward in front of the goal hold the stick up from the floor for shot on goal, or on the floor to make the defensive player to shoot for stearing the shot.

So, what if, we would put in as much effort as in training the goalies, to score goals and improve the shooting skills in floorball we would have really good goal scorers and snipers in floorball. Maybe we should also focus on goal scoring coaches / trainers?

Floorball game drills, here you will find 325 floorball game drills to cover up that part of your floorball practice. You will find a short description below each floorball game drill, or you just follow the numbering of the floorball players.

You can make the floorball game drills easier or more advanced by adding (defensive players) or removing players, moves or passes. By combining two floorball passing drills or adding a theme to a floorball drill you get new drills and challenge your players to develop. It’s although important to give time to you players to get the basic floorball passing skills in place first. I hope the floorball game drills will help you and your team and develop your floorball players.

…Floorball Goalie Trainer or Goal Scoring Coach, Part 3
Looking at goal scoring, shooting skills and practicing focus, you could say that much of the focus is today on, taking rebounds and creating a mask, traffic or wall in front of the goalie to reduce the visibility, when the shot comes.

This will be important in future, but increased training focus will need to be on shooting skills and scoring goals, with different types of shooting techniques like:
– Wrist shot
– Snap shot
– “Slap shot”
– Backhand
– Shooting unannounced and in movement sideways
and to be able to shoot with the weight (centre of gravity) on both feets, left or right (the foot that is in front).

“In NHL the shots will not come through if you don’t shoot fast and quick”
/Dave Smith, NHL officials health and wellness coach

If you want to see some examples from hockey you can watch Alexander Ovechkin and Phil Kessel. Ovechkin example, start at 00:44, goal scoring skills in practice.

…Floorball Goalie Trainer or Goal Scoring Coach, Part 2.
If you look at the Nordic countries in ice hockey most of the teams and players are very skilled when it comes to stick handling and skating, but there is lack of good goal scorers and skilled shooters, why? (of course with some exceptions)

This is simply a result of practicing focus, in USA and Canada a lot effort is put in this area, shooting and goal scoring, while in Sweden and Finland other areas are prioritized. This could also be a advantage to use in floorball, use the strong knowledge in USA and Canada from hockey, to score goals and training skilled goal snipers.

In the end it doesn’t matter how skilled you are with the ball or the puck, what counts is the amount of goals scored.